VCU’s collaborative, multidisciplinary functional neurosurgery team is dedicated to performing complex procedures that restore neurological condition and function. This growing, highly specialized field is paving the way for advanced treatment options for neurological conditions and movement disorders once considered untreatable, such as:

• Dementia
• Dystonia
• Epilepsy
• Essential tremor
• Focused Ultrasound
• Parkinson’s disease
• Seizure
• Torticollis

Most of neurosurgery involves taking something out, whereas here we’re actually putting things in to alter the function of the brain.”
- Kathryn Hollway, M.D.

Physicians in the Department of Neurosurgery collaborate with neurologists and neuropsychologists to provide comprehensive patient care and resident training. Learn more about our innovative and multidisciplinary approach at the VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center.

In collaboration with health care providers across multiple disciplines, we perform surgical procedures that remove or isolate the area of the brain where seizures originate. We use the following surgical techniques:

• Open resection
• Laser ablation
• DBS
• Responsive neurostimulation (RNS)
• Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)
• Brain mapping using subdural grids
• Stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG)
• ROSA

Under the leadership of Harold Young, M.D., the department became a national leader in the diagnosis and treatment of normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). A disorder caused by excess cerebrospinal fluid in the brain’s ventricles, NPH has historically been misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease.

Each year we perform 70-80 NPH procedures, which involves surgically implanting a shunt system to drain the fluid away from the brain and into the body.